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Shit, I have no idea who this brunette is. She looks to be a couple of years older than me.
“Oh, we’ve never met, don’t worry!” She smiles as she thrusts out a hand. “I’m Michelle. I knew your brothers at Knightsblood. I was in Para Bellum with Gabriel.” Her smile fades. “I…I was actually friends with your sister, too.”
My mind flashes back for a second to my conversation with Alistair the other day about Dante’s involvement with that. I glance around looking for him, but I can’t see him in the crowd. I shake those thoughts away as I smile back at Michelle.
“Nice to meet you!” I shake her hand.
“I was going to ask you if I could buy you a drink, but…” She nods at the full glass of wine in my hand. Then she grins mischievously at me, reaches into her cleavage, and pulls out a joint.
“Would you….” She waggles her brows. “Care to join me?”
“Thanks, but no,” I smile and shake my head. “It’s just not my thing.”
“No worries,” Michelle shrugs.
I glance over my shoulder, looking for Dante again as the dark, intrusive thoughts involving my sister start to filter back in.
He was there the night she died. The night she overdosed on a drug she’d never taken before.
And Dante married her, sealed her medical records, and stonewalled our family.
I swallow weakly as I smile at Michelle. “You know what? I won’t have any, but if you’re going outside…I could use some air.”
She grins. “Awesome! Come on, I know a spot.”
She leads me out of the crowded main hall of MOMA and down a side hallway. There’s a security guard at the end of it, but he seems to know her, and waves us through with a knowing wink.
Part of me is beyondshockedthat I’m following a literal stranger someplace random where she’s going to smoke weed. But Michelle seems nice, and she does know my brothers.
We round a corner and get to a big glass door that leads out to a dimly lit, beautifully landscaped little courtyard. Michelle slips the joint between her lips as she holds the door open for me.
“It’s a little chilly, sorry,” she mumbles as I step out.
I laugh lightly. “We’ll see how long I last?—”
I turn to see her suddenly yanking the door shut and hear the click of a lock turning: her still inside, me outside in the cold.
“What are you doing?!”
My heart climbs into my throat as Michelle leers at me and lights the joint, slowly taking a puff and exhaling a thin stream of smoke against the glass toward my face.
What the fuck?
My mouth opens as if to voice that very question out loud, when a man’s voice breaks the silence from behind me.
“Don’t mind Michelle.”
I gasp, whirling to see Renata’s son Silvio Bonpensiero. My face pales as he shuffles out of the shadows. Bandages still cover one side of his face.
“My older sister is a tiny bit overprotective of me,” he grins darkly, moving toward me. I try to move backward, but I’m stopped by the cold glass of the door.
“Funny, she doesn’t like it when people smash fuckingcocktail glassesover my head,” Silvio growls, his face contorting with rage. “Andneither. Do. I…”
25
DANTE
“You’re going softin your old age, Dante,” Carmine sighs, taking a sip of his scotch.
